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Confederate States General Staff
The Confederate States General Staff was a large body of officers within the Confederate States Army who were charged with centralized planning and who had supervision over all field armies. The Confederate States adopted the General Staff model in response to the United States decision to adopt the model in the decades leading up to the Great War - the US having emulated the German Army's General Staff following its defeat in the Second Mexican War. However, the CS General Staff was much looser in its control over the CS Army than were its role models. It was also more politically motivated: by the time of the Great War, the General Staff had become dominated by the upper class Whig descendants of the heroes of the War of Secession and the Second Mexican War. This nepotism came into play to the country's possible detriment during the Great War when, in 1915, signs of a possible uprising of Negroes were dismissed or overlooked. One dramatic example came when Captain Jeb Stuart III, the son of General Staffer Jeb Stuart Jr., used his considerable influence to prevent his manservant Pompey from being investigated. When the Red Rebellion broke out, Stuart's career was over. He opted to die in a blaze of glory on the battlefield. His father saw to it that Major Clarence Potter, the intelligence officer who initially investigated the Rebellion, and Sgt. Jake Featherston, the person who first drew Potter's attention to Pompey, were never promoted. In the immediate aftermath of the CSA's Great War defeat, Jake Featherston's political career began to rise as he blamed both the General Staff and the Negroes for his country's defeat. In the decades that followed, the General Staff officially maintained the restrictions imposed upon them by the victorious U.S., but even the conservative elements quietly found ways to subvert those restrictions. With Featherston's election to the presidency, the General Staff was overhauled. Stuart was forced to resign, as were the old guard, and Featherston replaced them with younger, more creative, and more aggressive officers, best exemplified by the new Chief of the General Staff, Nathan Bedford Forrest III, quickly grasped the value of improving barrel design and automatic small arms. It was Forrest who formulated Operation Blackbeard, the attack plan which initiated the Second Great War in North America in June, 1941. However, after the initial success of Blackbeard, the U.S. was able to respond, bringing its far greater resources to bear. Soon, Forrest's audacity gave way to pragmatism, and he began to subtly challenge Featherston's decisions, to no avail. Thus, the Confederacy met disaster at the Battle of Pittsburgh, despite Forrest's warnings to Featherston, and from 1943, was in full retreat. Forrest's efforts to stem the retreat met with disaster after disaster. Moreover, Forrest grew disenchanted with Featherston's refusal to see reality. After Atlanta fell in 1944, Forrest attempted a poorly planned coup that failed and saw his arrest and execution. The General Staff limped along, viable as long as Featherston lived. Upon his death, the C.S. ceased to exist, and its military along with it. Literary Note In OTL, the Confederate States Army did create a general staff in 1861, consisting of four general officers who, acting independently of one another, oversaw four very specific operational areas: adjutant general, quartermaster general, commissary general, and surgeon general. These four generals were very limited in their capacities to give orders to field officers. Category:Confederate States Army Category:Southern Victory